STARTO! Smack in the middle of the Tokyo megalopolis, stateside stereotypes run free.

It’s a special people indeed who can cast off the twin yokes of rigid history and a driven work ethic to spend time unwinding in Day-Glo game-show studios, tapping hand drums and howling with laughter at stunts like “Human Tetris” (players must contort their bodies to fit oddly shaped cut-outs in an advancing wall), “Human Bowling” (self-explanatory), “Do Not Laugh” (contestants who violate that rule are punched in the gonads), “Marshmallow Eating Contest” (with faces attached to a wall by rubber bands, players try, Tantalus-like, to munch the puffy confections dangling before them), and “Old Man Bites Tenderly” (don’t ask).

Heretofore, Americans who wanted to watch adults engage in such activities had to head to YouTube. But at long last, the network sages have responded. There’s the new Wipeout (ABC, Tuesdays 8 pm), a Japanese-inspired series that pits contestants against each other as they stumble and belly-flop over such obstacle-course stunts as “Big Balls” and “The Dreadmill.” There’s also Hole in the Wall, a program based on “Human Tetris” that’s set to premiere on Fox soon.

But the best of the bunch is I Survived a Japanese Game Show (ABC, Tuesdays 9 pm). Here, 10 Americans compete on a game show called Majide — which loosely translates as “you must be crazy.” What’s different from Wipeout, however, is that the contestants are battling in Japan. Moreover, the zaniness of the competition is like the gooey-chewy center inside a reality-show chocolate. Think of it as Survivor meets The Real World meets Lost in Translation.

Smack in the middle of the Tokyo megalopolis, stateside stereotypes run free. Cathy, from Staten Island, is the bitch. Justin, from Alabama, is the guileless good ol’ boy. Darcy, from Idaho, is the sweet small-town single mom. Bilenda, from North Carolina, is the sassy black chick. And Andrew, from Boston, and Olga, from Medford, do their part to up the Masshole quotient.

Nearly as entertaining as the game-show stunts is watching the Yanks grapple with Nipponese culture shock. Standing in Shibuya Square, with pedestrians swarming the streets like worker ants while towering neon signs pulsate with kana glyphs, middle-aged Ben marvels that he was “sitting on a couch in Punxsutawney” just the day before. In the house they share, things are even kookier. The beds are on the floor?! No shoes allowed!! Sake tastes like lighter fluid!! Dried squid!?! The toilet has . . . a remote control!!!

But back in Toho Studios, once host Romu Kandu yells, “Starto!”, weirdness takes on new meaning. It’s interesting that, in a country as wild and woolly as America, staid quiz shows like Jeopardy! are among the most popular, whereas in Japan, land of stringent etiquette and polite bows, the id is unleashed.

Once divided into teams — Yellow Penguins and Green Monkeys — our bemused compatriots set about competing in such wacky tasks as “Conveyor Restaurant” (a designated “eater” must gobble as many glutinous mochi rice balls as possible from a tray perched atop a teammate’s helmet as said teammate jogs on a long treadmill) and “Big Bug Splat on Wind Shield” (dressed as insects, complete with prosthetic green guts, contestants must leap from a trampoline and attach suction cups to target). Hilarity, as it sometimes does, ensues.

Japan’s neighbors across the East China Sea have a famous curse: “May you live in interesting times.” That we certainly do. The good news is that there are ways to cope. To paraphrase the late Hunter S. Thompson: “When the going gets weird, the weird put on a bug suit and turn pro.”

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97. Toby Young It’s easy to make this list when you sit next to the sexiest being on this green Earth: Top Chef hostess Padma Lakshmi. Still, Tom Colicchio managed to keep himself off our radar, and so did the dramatically unsexy Ted Allen. But Young is a shoo-in. Besides his canned one-liners and nonsense observations (actual Times headline for a review of Young’s book: “Learning To Succeed as a Loser, on Two Continents”), this baldie looks like a British inbred cousin of James Carville.

7. Jim Cramer CNBC’s Jim Cramer is the Jenna Jameson of financial reporting: the more the economy took it in the rear, the louder his screams of ecstasy became. We had this loudmouthed, prop-wielding financial Gallagher on our list a full year before he got pwned by Jon Stewart — but in 2009, Cramer wins our most-devolved award, streaking up the list from his 91st-place showing in 2008 to now land inside the top 10. How’d we figure it? Simple calculation: we moved him up a spot every time the market went down like a porn star — and added bonuses every time he whimpered “I should’ve done better.”

Collective mentality "We wanted to expand our reach as wide as possible and from that field create a program of film and videos that explicitly address duration."

89. Greg Behrendt We’re just not that into you, either. And not just because this unfunny self-help writer belittles desperate women, or because he looks like the offspring of Dane Cook and an old banana. This so-called author/comedian is one of those one-hit wonders who can’t accept his destiny, but who for some reason will have opportunities to produce a new failed talk show on E! every few years.

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INSIDE THE TEDXDIRIGO CONFERENCE | September 14, 2011 I arrived at TEDxDirigo on September 10 feeling rather less than confident about the state of world. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 — and the awful decade that unspooled from that sky-blue morning — was on my mind.